Historically, the performance rules in traditional organizations were simple: Your boss made assignments; you carried them out. Questioning your assignments was a sign of insubordination or incompetence. As organizations continue to move toward “project-b

Historically, the performance rules in traditional organizations were simple: Your boss made assignments; you carried them out. Questioning your assignments was a sign of insubordination or incompetence. As organizations continue to move toward “project-based” management to get more done with fewer resources, and as the demand for effective project managers continues to grow, more and more individuals find themselves with the opportunity to manage projects for the first time.

If you are like most people, you are “pretty sure” you know what projects are, and you “think” you know what project management is (and what a project manager does), but there’s always a varying amount of uncertainty in those perceptions. So, let’s start off by clarifying some key concepts. Project management is simply the process of managing projects (and you thought this was going to be difficult). While this definition is not particularly helpful, it does illustrate three key points:

Planning: Specifying the desired results, determining the schedules, and estimating the resources
Organizing: Defining people’s roles and responsibilities
Controlling: Reconfirming people’s expected performances, monitoring actions and results, addressing problems, and sharing information with interested people